In “Poseidon,” Josh Lucas plays the mysterious Dylan Johns, a lone-wolf, square-jawed, tough-talking card shark who reluctantly finds himself leading a band of survivors on a climb through a capsized cruise ship.
The journey is rife with peril, from cavernous elevator shafts and fiery explosions to water- filled escape routes.
In some ways, the movie mirrors the 34-year-old actor’s hard-fought path to leading- man status – and his own quest for challenging roles has inflicted a few war wounds along the way.
“There are some interesting parallels there,” Lucas agrees. “My career was really uncomfortable for a time because I was not getting work that I thought would be good, or could be good.”
Born in Arkansas, Lucas grew up the son of medical professionals who, as protesters against nuclear power in the 1970s, moved their four children around the South some two dozen times before Josh was 13, when the family headed to the Pacific Northwest and settled in Washington. After moving to Los Angeles in the early ’90s, Lucas struggled to get by on commercials and TV show guest spots.
“I remember at one point, my mother said, ‘Why don’t you quit?”‘ Lucas recalls. “Because I was literally in tears about having lost yet another movie role … it was such a battle at that point. I was so angry.
“But even if I was completely unsuccessful (in film) for 20 years, acting would still be an obsession.”
Dissatisfied with the jobs he was landing, Lucas left Hollywood in 1994. He moved to the East Coast and dived into stage work. It was, he says, the decision that turned the tide.
In 1998, a successful run in Terrence McNally’s controversial but short-lived off-Broadway play “Corpus Christi” (about a gay Christ figure and his apostles; Lucas played a Judas-like character) that earned him good notices and would set the stage for a film career. He landed movie roles – small ones, but diverse, and in quality projects: He was Laura Linney’s deadbeat ex in “You Can Count on Me,” a stockbroker in “American Psycho” and Russell Crowe’s math scholar pal in the Oscar-winning “A Beautiful Mind.” Then, in 2002, his turn as Reese Witherspoon’s estranged redneck husband in the smash “Sweet Home Alabama” brought him to the surface.
It was a star-making turn, tough but charming, in a frothy romantic comedy – something the thoughtful, brooding Lucas wasn’t expecting.
Since then, he has made it no secret he prefers roles that make him stretch; after all, those blond good looks are just one aspect to him.
“I didn’t want (success) to be handed to me,” Lucas says. “I wanted to be able to play opposite actors like Sean Penn and Russell Crowe. If you’re Andre Agassi, you want to play Pete Sampras, you know? I wanted to be able to hit the ball back as hard as I could.”
While it helps to have blockbusters on his résumé (his were 2003’s “Hulk” and last year’s “Stealth”), the real Lucas is evident in small films like “Undertow” and “Around the Bend,” both released in 2004.
But a combination shot came with this past January’s “Glory Road,” in which Lucas starred as Texas Western college basketball coach Don Haskins, who took an all-black team to the NCAA championship in 1966.
“I knew nothing about basketball, so that role became an extraordinary quest,” Lucas says. “One time, (Miami Heat coach) Pat Riley, who knew Haskins well, told me: ‘You don’t know the sport, but (in this role) you’ve got to convince not only an audience but also me and the players.” Lucas brought his A-game – the movie was a hit.
While “Glory Road ” taught him a game, “Poseidon” taught him pain. During the arduous shoot for director Wolfgang Petersen, Lucas tore the muscles in his right thumb, requiring two surgeries, and his right eye was split open when co-star Kurt Russell accidentally clocked him with a flashlight during an underwater sequence.
He ticks off his injuries with laid-back cool, but even though he says it was all “part of doing a disaster film,” Lucas was well aware that a film like this could be dangerous. Characteristically, it only fired him up more.
“I got caught on a wire underwater. The safety people and camera people couldn’t see me, and there was like 2 inches of breathing room. I got trapped and disoriented, I was starting to lose my breath, there was nowhere to go … when I got out of the water, I screamed at Wolfgang, ‘We can only do one take, that’s all you can have, one take!’
“And Wolfgang said, ‘Yes, I understand. … So, we’ll do it again?’ “And I said, ‘OK – let’s go!”‘
